I have a mild obsession with home decor. Not that I actually go through with most of it, but man, I could spend hours pouring over Pottery Barn catalogs, Martha Stuart Living magazines and Pinterest (oh my god the ideas on Pinterest!). Now that we’re done with apartment living and finally in a house of our own, the obsession has grown 100 fold but our light blue master bedroom walls, for example, are still completely bare after almost half a year here. (yikes!)

You might know Minted.com for their beautiful & customizable cards, invitations and birth announcements. But did you know they also sell ornaments, garlands, table runners, day planners, personalizable photo backdrops and tons more? When Minted approached me to review their Art Marketplace, I took it as a sign it’s time to start getting serious about decorating my house.

But, I still wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted, so I let my kids go first and hoped for inspiration along the way. The kids previously had an ocean inspired theme to their bedroom, but as my daughter has recently developed an all-consuming obsession with bright orange (luckily we convinced her to go with just one wall instead of the whole room), the marine life doesn’t really fit as well as it once did. We picked an orange color filter (of course) at Minted.com/Art and scrolled through the limited edition prints. My daughter immediately began calling out favorites:

I also love that if you scroll down to the bottom of any page, Minted shows you a person holding the art in every size offered so you can see exactly how big your picture will be when it arrives. And, when you click on a frame, you can see how each picture will look in each specific frame. Some pictures even have a few different customizable color options like the Schooner design below. Although I do know what an 8×10 looks like, I found myself checking to see how the print looked every time – it was comforting and sometimes actually had me going bigger or smaller.

I’m still looking through all the options, but once I make my final decision and place my order, I’ll be sure to share with you what I think about these prints and frames in person. And if you’re looking for a great Christmas gift, there’s still time with 2 day or overnight shipping!

We got started on our nursery redecorating project by painting the changing table. The table was a pretty blonde wood but nothing else in the room matched, so my husband and I went down to Home Depot. Now, I’m a research fiend so this is embarrassing, but it really must have been due to a case a pregnancy brain, because we bought regular white spray paint. My husband carried the table outside, gave it a nice paint job and stuck it in the garage to dry. The next day I ask if we can bring it inside and hubby says “Maybe. I’ll bring it inside and we’ll know pretty quickly if it has aired out enough.” ….. Cue light above my head clicking on (and some thunder and lightning for dramatic effect):

Pregnant women and young children are NOT supposed to be exposed to paint fumes

Why did some part of me just assume spray paint wasn’t actual paint that could be harmful?

I believe there was a sheepish and panicked smile quickly aimed over my shoulder as I ran over to my computer. And I’m sure there was some eye-rolling from his direction. Turns out spray paint is actually the WORST kind of paint we could have possibly picked with some of the highest levels of VOCs.

VOCs are harmful chemicals (linked to a variety of health effects including eye, nose and throat irritation; dizziness; liver, kidney and central nervous system damage and even cancer) that offgas (or outgas) for long periods of time at normal room temperatures (small amounts could even be released for the entire lifetime of the paint). You can read more scary details using the link at #1 in my list above if you like.

So,we bought some Zero-VOC paint from Mythic Paint (another great option is Lullaby Paints) hoping we could just paint over the spray paint and seal in the nasty VOCs. Unfortunately, no-VOC paints are made to be breathable, so they’ll lessen the VOCs emitted but no where near completely seal them off. Back to the drawing board.

Using paint stripper was going to be toxic also, plus some parts of the changing table appeared to be pressed wood or some other type of processed wood (it was a hand-me-down gift, so no way to visit the retailer to know for sure) so sanding the table down could release formaldehyde and more fun, harmful stuff!! (the upside and downside of research is finding other relevant topics). I was getting ready to tell my husband we just needed to suck it up, toss the table and replace it when I finally found a solution: we could paint a new layer of a non-toxic, clear gloss sealer… and hopefully it won’t discolor the paint requiring us to do one more coat of the zero-VOC (update: my husband is developing an eye twitch).

To do this the right way the first time, use a no or low-VOC primer or sealer on any particle board or processed wood items and definitely before painting them. Then always (cause it’s good to protect the adults too), but especially if you have or are expecting children, use a zero-VOC paint. We’ll be using whatever is leftover of the sealer on our IKEA bookshelves. Sigh.